1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, control method of the information processing apparatus, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to increase of a volume of software composing a system to be installed in a job processing apparatus, a period of time starting from an operation of a power switch until a completion of a start-up of the system (i.e., a system starting time) tends to increase.
The tendency is also seen in a multifunction peripheral performing, for example, copying. The tendency more increases as functions of, for example, a copy function, a print function, a facsimile function, are added to the multifunction peripheral. More specifically, the increase of the functions increases the starting time. In order to solve the problem of the increase of the starting time, a suspension technique and a hibernation technique are employed.
In the text, the suspend technique (hereinafter referred to as “suspend”) is a technique in which information on a volatile storage (i.e., a memory) of a system at an arbitrary point of time is stored in the volatile storage itself and, upon the next start-up of the system, the information on the memory is read out to restore the system to the “state when the information is stored”.
On the other hand, the hibernation technique (hereinafter referred to as “hibernation”) is a technique in which information on a volatile storage (i.e., a memory) at an arbitrary point of time is temporarily saved and stored in a nonvolatile storage as a hibernation image and, upon the next start-up of the system, thus saved and stored hibernation image is rewritten into a volatile storage, thereby restoring the system to the “state when the information is saved and stored”.
An access speed of a typical volatile storage is faster than that of a typical nonvolatile storage, i.e., the typical volatile storage requires no time for rewriting, the next system starting time can be shortened more in the suspension technique than in the hibernation technique.
However, a power supply of the system can be completely shutdown in the nonvolatile storage while the volatile storage requires continuous energization for the sake of information storage, so that the hibernation technique can achieve more power-saving than the suspension technique. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-218399 discusses that a combined use of the suspension technique and the hibernation technique can realize both of the shortening of the next system starting time and the power-saving.
Examples of the nonvolatile storage include a hard disk drive (HDD), a storage medium on a flash memory basis such as a solid state drive (SSD), a universal serial bus (USB) memory (hereinafter collectively referred to as “flash memory”). However, the HDD takes time for spin up and thus is unfavorable in the light of an effort in reducing a system starting time.
There is such a problem that the HDD is too fragile for storing material information relating to the start-up of the system, resulting in inviting less reliability.
On the other hand, the flash memory requires shorter time for initialization and is not fragile, so that the flash memory tends to be employed as a nonvolatile storage.
However, an upper limit in number of rewrite times is set for the flash memory as the nonvolatile memory.
FIG. 10 is a performance mapping illustrating number of rewritable times per Block of the flash memory. In the performance mapping, the vertical axis indicates the number of rewritable times and the horizontal axis indicates a bit per Block.
The flash memory in which the number of bits to be stored per Block is one bit is referred to as a single level cell (SLC) type flash memory 601. The flash memory in which the number of bits to be stored per Block is two bits is referred to as a multiple level cell (MLC) type flash memory 602. The flash memory in which the number of bits to be stored per Block is three bits is referred to as a triple level cell (TLC) type flash memory 603.
In FIG. 10, 5×nm 604, 3×nm 605, and 2×nm 606 indicate a semiconductor fabrication process, respectively. In the semiconductor fabrication process, as a numerical value becomes smaller, a higher integration and a lower voltage can be achieved, however, the cost becomes higher and an electrical strength becomes lower. In the text, the SLC type flash memory and the MLC type flash memory are exemplified since they are main stream of the storage device in the current market.
With reference to FIG. 10, it is found that the SLC type flash memory is advantageous in the number of rewritable times per Block in comparison with the MLC type flash memory. However, the MLC type flash memory has larger memory capacity per Block than the SLC type flash memory. Therefore, in a case of the same number of Blocks (i.e., the same volume), the MLC type flash memory can be made into a greater capacity, and, in a case of the same capacity, the MLC type flash memory can be produced with lower cost. In the light of the above, it is so considered that the MLC type flash memory will be a main stream of the memories in future.
For example, in a case where the MLC type flash memory as the nonvolatile storage having the above described characteristics is employed as the job processing apparatus of an image forming apparatus, the number of rewritable times may rather shorten the service life of the image forming apparatus.
Based on the above described characteristics, for shortening the system starting time, required is a start-up control flexible with respect to an affect to be exerted to the power-saving and the service life of an apparatus according to the characteristics of the nonvolatile memory to be employed.